Why My SVG Size Kept Changing in Cricut (And How I Finally Fixed It)

I ran into this the hard way.

I created a design in Affinity Designer 2, sized it exactly how I wanted it, exported it as an SVG, and opened it in Cricut Design Space… and it was completely the wrong size.

Not a little off—way off.

At first, I assumed I had done something wrong in my design. So I resized it, exported it again, and tried again. Same problem.

That’s when I realized it wasn’t the design—it was the way the SVG was being exported and interpreted.

What I DiscoveredAffinity and Cricut don’t speak the same “language” when it comes to SVG files.

Affinity gives you a lot of flexibility when exporting, but Cricut is much more rigid. If certain settings aren’t just right, Cricut will rescale your design based on its own rules instead of the size you created.

So even though everything looked correct on my end, Cricut was essentially reinterpreting the file.

The Main Issue (For Me)

The biggest problem turned out to be one small setting:

“Set ViewBox”

I had it turned on without realizing what it actually did.

When this is enabled, Cricut ignores your original dimensions and uses internal coordinates instead. That’s why the size kept changing no matter what I did.

Once I turned it off, things immediately started behaving the way I expected.

A Couple of Other Things That Tripped Me Up

Even after fixing that, I noticed a few other things that could still affect sizing:

• DPI differences — Cricut seems to prefer around 72 DPI

• Extra space around the design — even a little bit can throw off the final size

• Hidden objects — anything sitting off the artboard still gets exported

None of these were obvious at first, but together they can definitely cause problems.

What Finally Worked

Here’s what I now do every time before exporting:

• Make sure my design fits the artboard cleanly

• Remove anything I’m not using (even if I can’t see it)

• Export as SVG with:

  • Set ViewBox turned OFF 

  • DPI set to 72 

  • Flatten transforms ON 

Since doing that, my designs have been importing into Cricut at the correct size consistently.

Final Thoughts

This wasn’t a design problem—it was a translation problem between two programs.

Once I understood that, everything got a lot easier.

If your SVGs aren’t coming into Cricut at the right size, it’s probably not something you did wrong—it’s just a matter of getting the export settings lined up.

If you’ve run into this too, you’re definitely not alone. This one catches a lot of people.